Mary Elizabeth

by Daisy Zamora

More than eighty years
Mary Elizabeth O’Brien
waited to be free, as she once was
for a brief moment of her life,
after her orphaned childhood
and before marrying
the one who would be her husband
for more than five decades.

(She gave him:
three boys, two girls
and stillborn
twins).

She withstood:
shouts
insults
rudeness
kicks
and punches)

When she finally became a widow,
her astonished family couldn’t recognize her.
Like a bird preparing its nest in spring,
she changed rugs and curtains,
bought furniture,
painted the house and beautified the garden.

No one—only she—remembers
who Mary Elizabeth O’Brien was,
a girl forgotten by everyone,
who has returned, briefly,
for a while before her own death.

—Translated by George Evans